The world is rapidly moving toward increasing penetration of smaller, more local sources of energy. This paper analyses the existence and design of an optimal policy for building robust markets for distributed renewable energy solutions, specifically energy technologies that can be adopted at the point-of-use by energy users (as opposed to energy utilities) that are carbon-free and renewable. This includes the objectives of distributed renewable energy policy, how they conflict among stakeholder types, which elements have been used to stimulate market growth and which policy type can drive towards unintended and intended consequences